Fine Whine and Wholesale Lies
Reason
When the Supreme Court struck down barriers on direct interstate (and consequently most online) wine sales, wholesalers warned that hordes of 15-year-olds would rush to their laptops, place orders with their favorite small vineyards, and funnel cases of pinot noir with their friends. A year later, the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America has commissioned a survey to assess the damage. Behold our lost generation of would-be Robert Parkers:
A year after the Supreme Court made it easier for wineries to ship products to customers in a different state, a new survey indicates that teens haven't necessarily rushed to use the Internet to buy alcohol, as critics of the court's decision have feared.
The survey by Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU) in Northbrook, Ill., found that 2% of youths ages 14-20 reported having purchased alcohol online, and that 12% reported having a friend who had ordered alcohol online.
Concerned yet? Not even the Office of National Drug Control Policy can muster up a proper alarmist statement. Meanwhile, the group that commissioned the survey heroically attempts to wring some shock value out of the whole thing:
Juanita Duggan of the wholesalers group called the survey results "shocking" and said she expects the number of teens ordering alcohol online to rise. "This is new, hard evidence that should really shake up this debate about direct sales."
Reason's Jacob Sullum has been on top of wine protectionism -- and the Institute for Justice's long, ultimately successful fight to free the vineyards -- for years: Check it out here, here, and here.
Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance
Bizarre and senseless tyranny can make kids unsettled, the American Psychological Association concludes, after its study of the effects of "zero tolerance" policies in schools that treat, for example, aspirin as punishable as cocaine, or a plastic knife as punishable as a gun. An excerpt from USA Today's account:
There are growing signs that zero-tolerance policies are steering more teens into the juvenile justice system, says Russell Skiba, an Indiana University educational psychologist. "Things that used to be handled by principals land kids in juvenile detention," he says. The report also mentions racial disparities; minorities are expelled more often than whites for comparable offenses.
Principals who want to be flexible "may be caught in a catch-22," says Richard Flanary of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. If school boards set rigid policies, principals who defy them risk losing their jobs. "Then they're bashed in the press for overreacting to kids' misbehavior."
And rightly so. The school boards have the power to end the catch-22; while it shouldn't have taken the conclusions of a bunch of egghead psychologists to show them how stupid and counterproductive such policies can be, I hope it helps toward that end.
reason.com |
